TURN Gallery is pleased to announce Ripple Effect, a four-person exhibition in which three artists - Odessa Straub, Ariel Dill, and Christian Sampson - respond to a single photograph by Gösta Peterson.
Gösta Peterson's image is that of a woman in a multi-colored floral dress looking into a three-paneled mirror with three bright, vertical deco lamps. The photo, taken in 1973 for Mademoiselle Magazine, seems to carry back to an earlier time - perhaps the turn of the 19th century. This was a moment when interest in women’s issues were starting to take place, just as the 1970s was a decade when feminism came to the fore in both art and society. Odessa Straub, Ariel Dill, and Christian Sampson, all abstract artists, were asked to respond to the internal life of Gösta Peterson’s image, which serves as the touchstone for the works seen in this show. The consequences of their efforts are remarkably nuanced in their appraisal of a photograph that has subtle political implications at a time when many women’s rights may be challenged. Through their various mediums -- painting, light projection, and textiles -- these three artists portray imagery and ideas without figurative interpretation, inviting the viewer to step inside the mirror of the unknown.
Gösta Peterson (b.1923, Orebro, Sweden) was a pioneer fashion photographer that worked throughout the 1960's - 1980's and is known for pushing story telling first and fashion second. Gösta Peterson broke the static mold of 1950's fashion photography as well as racial boundaries by putting the first African American woman on the cover of a fashion magazine. Self-taught, he began shooting in 1958 for Mademoiselle and continued to work for Harper's Bazaar, Elle, Look, Esquire, and GQ, among others. From 1965 -- 1977 Gösta Peterson worked on weekly stories for the New York Times Fashion Magazine including his iconic spread of Twiggy's first photo in America.
Gösta Peterson’s works have been exhibited as well as collected by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Victoria Albert Museum, London; Modern Musset, Stockholm (solo); Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Detroit Museum of Art, Michigan; Worcester Museum; Mass Museum of the City of New York, New York; and his most recent solo exhibition at Turn Gallery January 2015.
Odessa Straub's (b.1989, Brooklyn, NY) work draws from visual constructions of a moment and situation, translating the malleable imagery produced by combing through memory. Odessa Straub fluctuates between paint and materials in their most self-referential forms, revealing a spectrum between the two. Layered with emotions, bold textures, and fluid gestures, Odessa Straub's surfaces fuse paint with found materials such as rope, felt, leather, PVC, latex, and plexiglass. While remaining tactile and familiar, Odessa Straub’s work in Ripple Effect at TURN Gallery utilizes materials in a way that evokes the physical knowing of their substance, alongside the illusion of image and depth.
Odessa Straub graduated with a BFA from The Cooper Union in 2013. Solo exhibitions include: Necrotizing Woos, at Jeffrey Stark, New York, NY; Seasonings on Precipice Perception, at Mier Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (2015). Recent group exhibitions include: Your Face in the Mirror Isn't Your Face, Moran Bondaroff, Los Angeles, CA; Blue Jean Baby, SEPTEMBER Gallery, Hudson, NY; Present Conditional, Mier, Los Angeles, CA; Perfect Present: Three Generations of Painting, Jeffrey Stark, New York, NY; That’s The Neighbor, Always Dressing These Boulders In The Yard, The Suzanne Geiss Company, New York, NY. She lives and works in New York City.
Ariel Dill's (b.1976, Los Angeles, CA) oil paintings, with no single layer dominating, straddle abstraction and figuration. Her shifting compositions and ribbon-like gestures of paint appear to be floating in the ether, ghost-like. Echoing mythology, Ariel Dill’s brushstrokes drift between animals, costumes, expressions, and landscapes. Ariel Dill's works in Ripple Effect include paintings on canvas and vintage handkerchiefs. Ariel Dill removes the object of the picture frame, breaking down the external and unhinging the spirit of the internal.
Ariel Dill received her MFA from Hunter College and BA from Skidmore College. Ariel Dill's most recent exhibitions include a two person exhibit Ariel Dill/Mairikke Dau at Safe Gallery curated by artist Eddie Martinez, and her solo exhibit at TURN Gallery, Cosmic Springs, last April. Other exhibits include Let's Walk, Cuevas Tilleard Project, New York, NY; Anderson's Hidden Game, Loyal Gallery, Stockholm, Sweden; The Sorcerer's Apprentice, Pablo's Birthday, New York, NY; Drawing Hilma Af Klint, Jackie Klempay Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; New Paintings By...., Jack Hanley, New York; Dear Painting Looking Forward!, 247365, Brooklyn; Oscillations (solo), Southfirst Gallery, Brooklyn, NY.
Christian Sampson's (b.1974, Bradenton, FL) Color Light Projections hover between painting and sculpture, vacillating between dimensional boundaries. Through the physical real, the illusionistic projection, and the related double, Christian Sampson creates playful and dimensionally layered installations of color, light, and form. Most often his works are created site-specifically in response to a physical architectural space, from museum halls, to domestic living spaces, to pop-up performance stages. Although Christian Sampson's installations align themselves with the minimal language of Light and Space, artists of the 1960’s, his works can also be linked to early cinematic animation and handmade filmmaking experiments. Christian Sampson’s installation in Ripple Effect captures a similar fragmentation to Peterson’s photography – a moment that is frozen and divided into three different versions of reality.
Christian Sampson’s works have been exhibited at Centre Pompidou, Paris, as well as Southfirst Gallery (Maiki Pollack), Brooklyn, NY. In 2015, he collaborated with Ariel Dill and Amanda Friedman on a Color Like Projection Reading Room for Drawing Hilma Af Klint at Jackie Klempay Gallery, Brooklyn, NY. He also collaborated with Amanda Friedman in 2015 and 2016 creating Color Light Projections for dancers and performances at U.S. Blues Gallery and Essex Flowers Gallery, New York. From 2015 ‐ 2016 Sampson’s work was featured at Centre Pompidou-Metz in an exhibition titled Cosa Mentale: Art and Telepathy curated by Pascal Rousseau.